A million sq km more ice in Antarctic ice comeback (January 2008) compared to 1979, reported in the Daily Express 18 Feb 2008, and newsmax.com 19 Feb 2008. One of the most enduring icons of the global warming bandwagon is a polar bear clinging to a fragment of sea ice, due to arctic ice decreasing. However, at the other end of the globe, the sea around Antarctica is freezing over with greater than average areas of sea ice revealed by satellite images from U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In spite of what is claimed to be happening to Arctic sea ice, the northern hemisphere is emerging from its coldest winter in decades. China and Central Asia have experienced devastating falls of snow, and in some places rivers are so frozen there is not enough water flow for hydro-electricity generators. Even the Middle East has experienced snowfalls and below zero temperatures and villages in the island of Crete have been snowed in. Phil Brennan of Newsmax concluded his article “If global warming gets any worse we'll all freeze to death.

Editorial Comment: The editors of this newsletter followed up the reference to satellite data on polar ice caps and found some interesting graphs and images on the website of the National Snow and Ice Data Centre, (an organisation associated with NOAA) which can be viewed at here. The graphs show Antarctic Ice increasing which can be confirmed by looking at a collection of images of the extent and concentration of sea ice around Antarctica since 1979. Over the past three decades the ice has waxed and waned, and the most recent image (March 2008) shows more ice than average. There is certainly no consistent upward trend of melting, as you would expect if global warming was truly global. The cold Northern Hemisphere winter and the increase in Antarctic sea are one reason why some researchers are claiming recent global warming has peaked and is now on a downturn. As the amount of carbon dioxide and other gases released by human activity have not suddenly decreased the change in climate cannot be explained in terms of human industry, which means that the recent warming cycle wasn’t due to human activity either. Instead, warming and cooling are part of the cycles of climate change given as a warning to Noah in Genesis 8:22 that there would be periods of cold and heat as well as regular patterns of day and night, and summer and winter. (Ref. trends, environment, politics)